A Way Out
(1 Corinthians 10: 1-13)
First, let me begin by offering an apology to my mother just in case she is watching. I was born to teenagers, and I don’t think either of them were ready for a strong-willed and rebellious first child. It’s not that I was inherently bad, but when my sister came along a few years later I really began pushing the boundaries to the point, on many occasions my frustrated mother would sternly say to me: “wait until your father gets home!” I’m sure the last thing he wanted to be greeted with after a hard day of trying to make a living as a traveling salesman was an accounting of my latest act of maternal defiance that required some sort of swift and appropriate punishment. I quickly figured out that the thicker and wider the belt the less it hurt. Fortunately, I had two sets of loving grandparents who served as buffers when my parents needed a break. I’d like to say I grew out of it but then I hit my teens where I honed my skills of disobedience to a fine razor’s edge. It wasn’t until I suffered a disastrous first year at college and a year of educational recovery at a local community college that I left the State of New York for another college that I confronted the causes of my rebelliousness and came home a better person. Of course, meeting and falling in love with Teresa Atkins played a small part in my maturation process. I was on my way to becoming a responsible adult putting the rebelliousness of my youth behind me. There was a way out.
And I think that’s what the Apostle Paul is writing about in our scripture reading for today. He’s reminding the Christian believers in the church at Corinth about Israel’s rebellious past and their failure to follow God’s instruction no matter what He did for them or how he punished them for their defiance. Israel’s history of being a delivered people, yet yielding to the temptations of idolatry, serves as a warning for the Corinthian community which is why the Apostle begins by saying: Brothers and sisters, I want you to be sure of the fact that our ancestors were all under the cloud and they went through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. However, God was unhappy with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Paul’s audience consisted of both converted Jewish believers and new Gentile followers. He not only wanted to remind his Jewish readers of the God of Abraham, but he also wanted to educate the Gentile members of the Corinthian church of the history and nature of God and the lengths He would go for his children no matter how rebellious. He wanted to remind them and inform them that Israel previously had signs of God’s presence among them, including their saving passage through the exodus water and God’s guidance in the cloud, and spiritual food and drink. Yet the Israelites fell into idolatry, sexual immorality, and complaining. Their poor example was recorded in Scripture for the benefit of the Christian community living in the end of time. Which includes us.
Paul explains that these things which he speaks of serve as examples for us so that we won’t crave evil things like they did. He warns against worshipping false gods like some of them did and not to practice sexual immorality. He says not to test Christ like some did only to be killed by snakes. He also cautioned against grumbling and complaining like some of them did who were ultimately killed by the destroyer. He says: These things happened to them as an example and were written as a warning for us to whom the end of time has come. Paul is cautioning them, and us, to remember the lessons the Israelites learned the hard way about God so we can avoid repeating their errors. He issues a cautionary warning to those who think they are standing and need to watch out or else they may fall. He says: No temptation has seized you that isn’t common for people. He’s addressing those of us who think something like that would never happen to us, that we aren’t weak like those people, we know and understand the difference between right and wrong. Paul reminds his readers that they really aren’t any different than anyone else and we all have these basic human needs and urges. Sometimes the temptation is obvious and easily avoidable, other times it’s packaged in a way that is deceiving. It’s no big deal, everyone else does it, nobody will get hurt, I can stop whenever I want, it’s my life to do with what I please. Trust me, if my time in the Vice Division of the Houston Police Department taught me nothing else, temptation is a slippery slope, creating a pit that is near impossible to claw your way out of. Now that we’ve been sufficiently scared Paul reassures us by telling us that God is faithful no matter what we’ve done and that he won’t allow you to be tempted beyond your abilities. Instead, he says, with the temptation, God will also supply a way out so that you will be able to endure it. When I read that I was reminded of a Baptist preacher we arrested in one of our vice prostitution stings. He had succumbed to the temptation, his inner urges, and yet I like to think that God helped him through it, helped him find a way out of his sin and degradation. That’s what all of us fallen sinners hope.
You know, the longer I do this the more amazed I am at how relevant the lessons of the Old and New Testament are. So many people say that the Bible is out of date, that it’s ancient history, but the situations we get ourselves into and the lessons to be learned are timeless. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing sandals and a tunic or walking shoes and a North Face jacket. Human nature is the same and, for us Christians, there is a way out. The Christian response to temptation should be neither over confidence nor defeatism, because God does not allow us to be tempted beyond our capacity to resist, and always provides a way out, and a way to redeem ourselves if we are truly repentant.
Now before we judge the Israelites of old too harshly, it’s helpful to remind ourselves about what occupies our attention most of the time. Are we grateful for what God has given us, or are we always thinking about what we don’t have, what the other person has? Yeah, we’re not so different from the Old Testament Israelites when we start to grumble about what we don’t have, and we resent what someone else might have. Social media, Twitter and Facebook has raised our grumbling to a new level, a fevered pitch when you start reading the comments about what some undeserving person or group of people got that you never got. The new buzzword is “entitlements” as in free school breakfasts and lunches for hungry children, healthcare for people who can’t afford it, a break on college tuition for some young person who wants to get a better education so they can get a better job, make more money, support their family, buy more stuff, and pay more taxes. Aren’t we all entitled to be fed, to be healthy, to a better education, to work a job that supports us and our families? And yet, we forget God’s gifts to us of life, family, friends, food, health, and work. Like the people of Israel, we don’t seem to notice what God is doing for us; setting us free, making us a nation, giving us a new land, because we are so wrapped up in what we think God isn’t doing for us. In Texas we call that a “pity party”.
Yeah, it’s a tough world out there and it’s easy to go down that wrong path. In a culture filled with moral depravity, sin-inducing pressures, and envy, the Apostle gives us strong encouragement about these pitfalls of temptation. He reminds us that wrong desires and temptations happen to everyone, so don’t feel as if you’ve been singled out. Others have resisted temptation, and so can you, and any temptation can be resisted because God will help you resist it. God helps us resist temptation by helping us recognize those people and situations that give us trouble. The Spirit urges us to run from anything we know is wrong and to choose to do what is right. When we find ourselves in those situations, we must pray for Gode’s help and seek friends who love God and can offer help and support when we are tempted. Running from a tempting situation is our first step on the way to victory, it’s our way out.
Let us pray.
Merciful and compassionate God, have patience with us when we disappoint you. We don’t mean to but when the world is coming at us from every direction, we find it hard to focus on you and your Word. Not only is our time consumed by just trying to get by we are challenged when we are at our weakest by temptations that seem harmless but end up being a trap from which we cannot free ourselves. We struggle to find a way out through our own efforts, but it only gets worse. How grateful we are that you are there and by your Spirit will take us by the hand and lead us up out of the pit. By your grace we are saved and for that we thank you, we thank you in Jesus’ name, Amen.